Home
by the ticking clock
Summary: Arya Stark finds her home, with the only brother she has left. Slight AU. One-shot.


**My first Song of Ice and Fire fic, so please, please let me know what you think!**

**Inspired by Min Daae's story, And Now My Watch Beginnings  
**

At first he didn't believe it was her.

The men had said they had found a girl, but when Jon looked at her-with her hair cut close and her battered, blood-stained clothes, her sword(Needle?) still at her side, her hands stiff with cold, snow frozen to her eyelashes, her thin, hardened face-she looked like a boy.

She didn't look like his sister.

_His_ Arya was wild, but she had long hair and dresses that should have been nice but were ruined with mud. His Arya had a big smile and laughing eyes, his Arya was a little girl.

The being they laid before him was still small-but larger than he remembered-and as he unwrapped her layers of frozen clothes, he could feel hard, toned muscle under his hands.

Ghost came into the room, silently while Jon was wrapping her in blankets. The direwolf looked at her, sighed, and laid down beside her, bending his head to give her a careful sniff.

"Good boy, Ghost," Jon said, and ruffled the white fur. "You remember her, don't you?"

Ghost only looked at him, and then rested his chin gently across her chest, closing his eyes.

Jon left them there, his direwolf and the his little sister, until he heard both their breaths even out in a steady sleep.

OoO

She was wake when he came in at dusk.

Her eyes were closed, but he could tell by the methodic way her fingers clenched in Ghost's fur that she was not sleeping.

"Jon?" Her voice raised, a question.

The tone shocks him. Her voice is not the voice of a small girl, asking for her brother. Her voice is hard and mature and sad.

He swallowed hard and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "It's me."

Her eyes opened, and there was a light in them he had never noticed before, a kind of aching, brilliant sadness that seared into him. Her gaze pinned him in place. For half a second he was almost afraid of her. But then her lips twitched up, in a ghost of her old smile, and she said, 'Hello."

He smiled back-felt it waver a little with emotion-and crossed the distance between them to sit beside her. "Hello."

She did not need to tilt her head up to meet his eyes anymore, he noted. Her fingers are still clenched tightly in Ghost's fur, clutching him with almost a desperate need, and he realized-

"Where's Nymeria?"

He was surprised when her face did not change. Only her eyes, which suddenly seemed brighter than usual. "I do not know," She said, softly, almost formally. "But I'm going to find her."

There was tension in the air between them, he could feel it, so he motioned to the wolf by her side, and said, "I see Ghost has been keeping you company."

Another ghostly smile flickered briefly across her face. Her fingers clenched tighter into the direwolf's fur. But she said nothing.

"Arya..." Jon really didn't know where to begin, what to say. Arya had been gone for so long, and now she was almost a stranger. Someone cold and tall and hard, someone he didn't recognize. His little sister he could have easily gotten answers out of, but not this strange girl who looked like a boy. Finally, he said, "Are you injured?"

She stared straight into his eyes and said, "No."

"You're left leg is swollen. Did you break it?"

Again, the same, curiously flat expression. "No."

This was a game he understood-a game he and Arya and played many, many times when she had been in fights with boys and come to him for assistance. He crossed his arms over his chest. "You're lying. How did you become so good at lying, little sister?"

At his old nickname for her, a real grin spreads across her face, and suddenly she looks like _his _Arya. The girl who didn't want to be a lady but was still a young child, the girl who loved him so sweetly, the girl who would wrestle with him when her mother wasn't looking, the girl who had snapped, "I know how to use it!" when he had told her, "Stick 'em with the pointy end."

But then the resemblance vanished, and a cool, sly expression stole her features. "If I told you, Jon, I'd have to kill you."

And her voice was so serious that Jon believed her.

OoO

"Jon?"

He jumped at the unexpected sound of her voice, calling out for him in the dark; he thought she had been asleep. "Arya, I thought you were asleep."

"No," She said, as if it were obvious, and when he looked over, her eyes were shining at him over the pale white of Ghost's fur, "I don't sleep, usually."

He crossed the room and sat beside her, absently reaching out to stroke Ghost's head when the direwolf opened his eyes. "And why is that?"

She reached for his hand, pressed her fingers to his. "Because, Jon, I dream. And I do not want to dream."

Her voice was so soft, low and sweet that he said without thinking, "What do you dream about?"

Arya's eyes hardened, and she looked away, quickly. "Terrible things. Things you have never seen."

He should be telling her that. Lecturing her about the dangers of dreams after battle. But instead, here she is, a wise, small, hardened child, saying she could not sleep because of dreams, telling him that she had seen more than he had.

Had she?

"All right," He said into the charged silence when she did not speak again, "since we both aren't sleeping you might as well tell me a little bit about where you've been all this time."

That same cool, hard expression stares at him, eyes saying _no, _more clearly than words ever can, and she said, "that is what I dream about. So no, we cannot speak of that."

He sighed, frustrated by her formality and how very grown up she was. "As you wish."

"I'm sorry," she said, finally, softly. "I'm not used to comfort like this."

He gives her a small smile and ruffles her hair, as he used to do when she was little. "I forgive you."

Her eyes had closed at his touch, but she opened them again, staring at him with such utter despair that he wanted to pull her into his arms. Her lip trembled, as if she were going to cry, but her voice was steady, curiously quiet when she said, "I missed you."

Keeping his hand on her close-cropped hair, he bent down to kiss her forehead. "I missed you too."

He didn't say that he still missed her, that he wanted his little sister to come back to him and not this odd, hardened stranger, but the words linger in the air between them until she looked away.

"Can Ghost stay with me tonight?" She asked, again strangely formal, "I like his warmth."

"Of course," Jon said, and recognizing her unspoken request to be alone, he stood and left the room.

OoO

When the Whitewalkers attacked the next week, he ran to Arya's room to ensure that Ghost would stay with her. He wanted his sister protected.

When he flung open her door she was standing on her toes, one foot suspended in the air, arms raised over her head. Her sword was in reach, and as he entered her eyes flicked to it.

Ghost's lip was curled back in a snarl, but when he saw Jon he relaxed, pricking up his ears.

"Arya, what are you doing?" Jon finally asked when she continued to remain in her odd position.

"Dancing." She said shortly, and lowered her foot. "Do you need Ghost?"

Shaking his head, Jon flicked a hand towards the direwolf. "Stay with her," He commanded, and Ghost flattened his ears back, lifting his lip again.

Arya was smiling as he turned to go. "Jon!" She called out.

He turned back to her-half exasperated, half fearful, half worried that she would ask to come with him.

But she only lifted her sword, laid it across her knees, and said, "Stick 'em with the pointy end."

OoO

He returned to her room, bloodied and battle-weary, and found her in the same position as before.

She jumped up when she saw him and ran to him. "Jon?"

He held up a hand to ward her off, but smiled at her exuberance. That was something _his _Arya would have done. "Don't. I'm bloody."

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, tugging at his clothes, pulling him towards the bed, Ghost twining around both their heels, red eyes blazing, hackles raised.

"Sit." She ordered, and without even waiting for his response shoved him, hard, forcing him down on the bed.

"Arya-" He protested, "I-"

"Shh," she hissed, and pulled off his cloak, his gloves, running her hands down his arms checking for injuries as if she did this sort of thing every day.

Ghost rested his head against Jon's knee and watched her with wide eyes.

"Well," Jon half coughed, half laughed. "you are quite the nurse,"

She smacked his shoulder. "Shut up. Take a bath."

He smiled and ruffled her hair. "As you wish, little sister."

She smiled at him-her old smile. "I missed that, you know. Being someone's little sister."

The cryptic words ached in his heart, the matter a fact way she said them, but he nodded. "Well, you'll always be my little sister, Arya."

She cocked her head, fingered the hilt of her sword. "Thank you for that."

OoO

Ghost found him, sitting out in the ice later that night. The direwolf approached on silent paws, the hot rasp of his breath the only indication of his presence.

"Hello Ghost," Jon said, reaching out to stroke the wolf's head. "I trust you didn't leave Arya in danger, did you?"

Ghost blinked red eyes at him, pressing the ice-cold wetness of his nose to Jon's cheek.

Jon laughed quietly and pushed the direwolf's nose out of the way. "All right, wolf, I trust you."

"Are you praying?"

Arya's soft voice came from somewhere to his left and he turned his head towards the sound. "What are you doing out here?"

"I followed Ghost," She said, simply, and stepped out of the shadows to sit beside him. He saw now that her face was thinner than he remembered, cheekbones more defined.

He sighed and slung an arm around her shoulders. "Where did my sweet little sister go?" He asked the stars, tilting his head back to the sky.

Her voice was steady and flat when she answered, and the words chilled him more than snow or ice every could. "She died."

Running a hand across her upper arm in almost a soothing motion, he swallowed hard. "And who is beside me now?"

"I don't know," Arya whispered, "but she loves you very much."

He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze and then let her go, resuming his soft stroking of Ghost's head. "I'm glad."

"Jon," She said in a voice that was soft but firm at the same time. "I would like to tell you about some of my dreams now."

"You won't need to kill me?" The words were teasing, but he was generally curious.

"I'm not going to tell you much." There was a warning laced through her words: _Don't test me. _

He motioned for her to move closer to him. "All right then, little sister," He said, "tell me your dreams."

They sat together for what must have been hours, the young Commander of the Night's Watch, the direwolf, and the girl who had been a child and was now so much more, telling stories of battles and fires and dancing with swords.

And it did not matter to Jon that Arya was no longer his sweet, wild little sister. He was no longer the boy who stilled reeked of summer who had joined the Night's watch so long ago. They were both changed-older and wiser and wearier.

But when they went to bed that nigh, him half carrying her to her room, with Ghost padding at their heels, and when he bent to kiss her forehead and whisper, "Goodnight, little sister," in her ear, they could have been back at Winterfell again.

And that sweet rush of _home _and the feeling of her rough fingers clasping his made up for all the time they'd spent apart.

They weren't at Winterfell, but they no longer needed Winterfell.

They had each other-the bastard and the rebellious girl. Brother and sister.

They were home.


End file.
